The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost mission is preparing for its historic lunar landing attempt this week, but as it orbits around the moon the spacecraft is continuing to capture incredible footage of the Earth and our orbiting satellite. A new video from the mission shows the Earth setting and rising behind the moon just after the spacecraft made its second lunar orbit maneuver.
The video shows the view of the moon looming up behind the Blue Ghost spacecraft, with the Earth visible as a small crescent in the background. The Earth dips behind the moon as the spacecraft travels in its lunar orbit, before it passes by the moon and the Earth once again becomes visible. It’s a striking reminder that, even though the moon is very close to us in cosmic terms, it is still far enough away for the Earth to appears as just a small blip in the distance.
“Footage above showing the Earth rising and setting behind the Moon was captured by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander shortly after our second lunar orbit maneuver on February 18,” Firefly Aerospace explained in an update. “Blue Ghost’s solar panel, X-band antenna (left), and LEXI payload (right) on the top deck is also shown.”
As well as sharing this footage from the second maneuver, Firefly also confirmed that Blue Ghost has now made its third and final lunar orbit maneuver. The spacecraft burned its engines for 16 seconds to adjust its orbit, coming in closer to the moon in what is called a near-circular low lunar orbit.
But the big challenge is still ahead, as the Blue Ghost will attempt a soft landing on the moon this Sunday, March 2. If successful, this will be just the second ever landing by a commercial entity on the moon. To get into position ready for the landing attempt, the spacecraft will next burn its engines again when it comes closest to the moon, bringing it down in a maneuver called the Descent Orbital Insertion. The spacecraft is headed for a region called Mare Crisium, a basin located on the northeast of the moon’s near side.
The spacecraft is carrying a selection of experiments and tests of moon technology, including a number of payloads from NASA intended to test out ideas ahead of sending humans to the moon under the Artemis program. NASA also announced this week that one of these experiments, the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), was able to acquire a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal from a distance of 246,000 miles, which is a new record for the technology.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.